Call of Pripyat is the third in the trilogy (acting as Sequel to the original game, Shadow of Chernobyl) placing the gamer into the shoes of a STALKER, a bounty hunter, in the Ukrainian town that was affected mostly by the fallout, Pripyat.

It’s a fabulous world that feels as real as can be, sensitively depicting the desolate nature of your surroundings together with the shaman-like activities of other soldiers and stalkers around you as they fight in their own little battles in real time as they try to gain advantages in their own faction wars.

Graphically, it excels in dousing the world in this grey and green overtone that seems to have lost its colour, whilst at the same time illustrating some of the unnatural delights of a world affected by a man made catastrophe.

Although no role playing element is involved, there is character progression. Money is hard to come by in the world so you have to carefully purchase and manage both weapons and ammunition, of which there is a multitude of options. It’s armoury is typically diverse and ranges from cheap, sawn off shotguns that are found two a penny, right up to government special edition sniper rifles that can clean blow the head off an armoured man from 1km away.

The landscape is VAST and some of the locations are utterly terrifying. For the first time in my 30 years of game playing, I screamed at the screen, taking my headphones off and looking at my wife in an utterly embarrassed pose. It really did terrify me.

Being their third installment, it’s a lot less buggy than their previous iterations and gains from the obvious budget inflation and allocation to proper UAT testing. It’s not 100% perfect, but the gaming experience is.

10/10

It’s shit. It has the worst character textures I’ve seen in the past 5 years, lacks the character development and intimacy of the PC version and has an inherent mundanity about it that made me take it back to Game, 1 hour after buying it and trading it in for an instant £30 loss. That’s how much it sucked.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

PC version:

I had to check the title of this game as I just can’t believe it’s the same thing? A much bigger emphasis on the RPG element, it’s so much closer to the bloodline of Bioware games of yore, such as Balders Gate and Neverwinter Nights – both genre defining, benchmark games.
In 1600 x 1050 resolution, it also pisses on the 360 version and together with the top down, team based control method with the quickbar along the bottom, it’s been redefined.

It’s also a huge game as I’m discovering. Fingers aching already!

Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 

I’m pissed off with it for a few reasons.

1) Plot.
It really is the most random storyline I’ve ever seen. It hops, skips and jumps from one direction to the next and it appears to have arbitrary plots just so they can justify various token FPS levels. Airports, streets, shanty towns, houses – everything’s there but it’s a scrapheap challenge of game levels. I don’t mind so much the ‘Russia invading USA’ thing (World in Conflict spun that tale brilliantly). It’s just that there was no real fluidity and most of it made no fucking sense.

2) Single player campaign
I’m mainly pissed off with the relative shortness of the game. It was over way too quickly. On top of that, it’s got a pretty good skirmish kind of mode but some of them can only be played multiplayer and, well, we all know how we feel about that.

3) Super AI
I hate this on FPS game so fucking much. I will be prone on the ground with full camo army ranger gear – practically invisible to the naked eye, I’ll crawl along the ground slower than a snail, pop my scope from behind a barrel and BAM I get shot at from 2 miles away by a one eyed militant with an uzi. IT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE. Don’t do it. JUST DON’T.

[SPOILERS]

Having said that, there WAS some freaking typically awesome MW moments.
1) Jumping over that ridge in the snow-mobile was pretty rad
2) Jumping onto the helicopter ladder just as it’s flying away, in time to the crescendo of the spectacular soundtrack – this actually had me yelping out loud.
3) Dual Desert Eagles – I mean, we’re all blokes, right?
4) Mobile Sentry Guns are fucking brilliant. More games need this.

Overall, an excellent game in its own right, but I still think MW1 has it licked.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★½☆ 

Left 4 Dead continues this trend by wrapping a fast pace zombie apocalypse shooter within a game world that is terrifyingly real, if not believable, whilst including the single most important thing for long term playback value – co-op play.

I’ve been playing this game now since its launch day almost obsessively. Over Christmas I clocked up enough hours to embarrass me into not disclosing publicly the figure. As a fan of the Half Life series, the fast paced action sits perfectly between your FPS brain dead game such as Quakeworld or other death match titles and the more strategic titles such as Counter Strike Source. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that this offers far more strategic compensation that results in the apparently infinite replay value.

Versus mode is naturally the piece de resistance. By placing you and your team in the control of the enemy zombies, taking down an opposing team of survivors is a perversely satisfying experience. The first time my boomer vomited on an unsuspecting survivor, attracting my zombie hordes, I grinned so violently I think I scared myself.

With the community already in a frenzy with mods and upgrades, the game is guaranteed a prosperous life. I’ve already committed ridiculous hours to it and every new play brings new strategic considerations that continue to add replay value.

Best game I’ve played since the original Halo. I wish Valve all the success in continuing to provide us gamers with such awesome, quality titles.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★★★